Blanche Montel

Biography

Blanche Montel entered the world on 14 August 1902 in the cathedral-shadowed streets of Tours, Indre-et-Loire, and stepped onto screens while still a teenager, steering a barge through Jean Epstein’s lyrical La belle Nivernaise (1924). A decade later she buckled swash as Queen Anne opposite John Wayne in the 1932 Three Musketeers, then traded rapiers for ruffles in Miquette et sa mère (1933). Off-set she joined forces with director Henri Decoin, their marriage fusing two of French cinema’s busiest creative engines. Nearly a century after her first close-up, she drew her final breath on 31 March 1998 in the tranquil commune of Luzarches, Val-d’Oise, leaving behind a filmography that glimmers like the Loire at sunset.